Tag: John Kerry

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Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said …

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Joey Hack’s post, “Questions Raised by Billy Joel’s ‘Piano Man'” …

The answer to these questions, and many more like them, is that in 1974, Prozac had only just been invented. It wasn’t until years later that it went into wide circulation.

OakTree

He should be wearing a piano key necktie in that photo. And why is Billy Joel brandishing a Telecaster, anyway?

Packrat

I love that moment when he hits that soaring final chorus in “Piano Man,” and dozens of catheters come flying onto the stage.

Mark

Who cares about all the damn metaphors in “Piano Man”? I understood what he was saying. I also remember when Billy and his small group played to a packed house at the old Lafayette’s Music Room at Overton Square in the early 1970s. I listened to it live on FM-100. Billy loved Memphis, and Memphis loved Billy. He became a superstar almost overnight after that show.

Paul Scates

About Jackson Baker’s Politics column, “Another City/Suburban Battle” …

Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but did the city not determine that South Cordova was going to lose money for the city immediately after annexing it? I’ve been saying for a while that the annexation strategy is and has been failing.

If you were to do a postmortem on the annexations, I believe you’d find that even the ones that at first were profitable for the city likely are no longer profitable.

The big problem the city has is that the minute it annexes an area, property values in the area drop. So any business case the city did based on the potential tax revenue of the annexed area was wrong if they didn’t assume that the pool of funds would be reduced after annexation. Knowing how most governments operate, I doubt that kind of analysis was ever done on any of the annexations.

GroveReb84

Mark Luttrell: 26%; George Flinn: 11%; Brian Kelsey: 9%; David Kustoff: 8%; Tom Leatherwood: 7%; Steve Basar: 1%; Undecided: 38%.

Given the choice of the above, it’s easy to see why Undecided is winning.

B

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s column, “Medium Cool” …

Maybe the Flyer is too “cool” to educate themselves on Trump’s policies, but you can read them here if you can find time between comparing IPA’s: donaldjtrump.com/positions.

Clyde

Dubya was cool to a certain segment of the country — largely the same segment that loves Trump, and for many of the same reasons. The difference is that many of the people who voted for Dubya but weren’t fond of his cool trusted that his handlers would actually run the country for him. They don’t have the same trust with Trump. They know he’ll surround himself with yes-men and do whatever he damn well pleases, and that’s what scares them.

Hillary Clinton’s cool is 10th-grade math teacher cool — the teacher everybody hates after the first day of class, but toward the end of the year decide she’s all right, and by the time they graduate, remember her quite fondly as one of the best teachers they ever had.

Jeff

Bruce, you’ve gone too far. How dare you insult the noble brotherhood of “Siding Salesmen.”

I prefer to think of Trump as more like the guy who owns a bunch of sleazy and failed businesses and has the audacity to show up uninvited to the party, referring to himself as a “Business Genius, and VERY, very rich to boot.”

Oh … Wait a minute. Never mind.

So maybe we can just call him what he is: the turd in the punch bowl of the 2016 election year. And that’s not cool.

John Shouse

I dunno, I have sat in a bar with John Kerry and voted for him anyway.

CL Mullins

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Cohen to Head Back to Cuba With Obama

Cohen (l) in Havana last August with Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson and Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ)

For the second time within a year, 9th District Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) will be visiting Cuba. He’s going next week, as an official representative of the United States. Cohen, a longtime advocate of normalizing relations with Cuba, was a member of a bipartisan delegation to the island nation last August that, along with Secretary of State John Kerry, formally reopened the American embassy in Havana.

This time Cohen will accompany President Obama and a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators and Representatives.

A press release from the congressman’s office spells it out:

Congressmen Cohen to Join President Obama for Historic Cuba Visit Next Week

[WASHINGTON, DC] – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09) will be among a group of U.S. Representatives and Senators slated to join President Barack Obama on his historic trip to Cuba on March 20-22. President Obama will be the first president to visit Cuba in 88 years after announcing in 2014 that he intended to re-establish diplomatic relations with the country. In August 2015, Congressman Cohen joined U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and a bipartisan delegation of U.S. Senators and Representatives at the official re-opening of the United States Embassy in Havana, Cuba.

“I am proud to be joining President Obama on this historic and important trip,” said Congressman Cohen. “I have been a long-time supporter of re-opening diplomatic relations with Cuba and have cosponsored numerous bills in Congress to advance U.S.-Cuba relations. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it will also open new trade avenues for Memphis entrepreneurs, businesses, medical device companies and health-industry professionals, as well as improve Americans’ freedom to travel. I would like to thank President Obama for inviting me to join him.

I developed a love for Cuba when I was a 5-year-old with polio and had the privilege of meeting the late, great Cuban baseball legend Minnie Miñoso during an exhibition game in Memphis. Minnie spotted me at the game standing with crutches and sent me a baseball via one of his Caucasian teammates. At the time, the South was racially segregated, so he did not feel comfortable approaching a white child. This was an early lesson for me about civil rights and started my fondness for Cuba. I will be taking my Minnie Miñoso hat to wear at a baseball game while in Cuba to honor Minnie. I will also be taking additional hats Minnie’s son, Charlie, is sending to share with President Obama and Cuban officials.

Memphis’ ties to Cuba were strengthened last month when a 3-year-old Cuban child, Manolito Alejandro, received life-saving heart surgery at LeBonheur Children’s Hospital. I was pleased to help facilitate the surgery and delighted to meet young Manolito. In this instance, a young Cuban child benefitted from medical care in the U.S., but it is important to note that Cuba has some of the world’s best medical minds and practices and has made significant advancements in diabetes, cancer, and HIV research. Cooperation on medical procedures such as Manolito’s surgery will help advance medical diplomacy between Memphis and Cuba.” 

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Winds of War

“Nice little trees you got there. Be too bad if something were to happen to them.” — Nicky “Big Panda” Flacco, Memphis Zoo press secretary

After years of simmering unrest, tension has been racheted to a fever pitch in Memphis’ Midtown district, specifically in the long-troubled region known as Overton Park. The natural areas of the park are controlled by the Overton Park Conservancy, but the park is also home to the Levitt Shell, the Memphis College of Art, the Brooks Museum of Art, and the Memphis Zoo.

In recent years, the Zoo has been flexing its muscle, annexing portions of the OPC-controlled zone known as the Greensward for overflow parking, and doubling down by charging money to its customers to park there. The OPC has filed several complaints with local authorities against the Zoo’s actions, and has gone so far as to put picket lines of volunteers at its border to stop the invasion of foreign vehicles. This has led to minor skirmishes: cars bumping protestors, angry complaints to local police, etc.

There had been an uneasy peace in recent weeks, but in the waning days of the Wharton administration, the Zoo obtained a letter from city council attorney Allan “Wood Chips” Wade that it claims gives it the right to annex the Greensward for parking. Then, without warning, the Zoo removed 27 trees that had been planted near the Zoo border in 2012 by the OPC.

A local faction supporting OPC called Get Off Our Lawn (GOOL) reacted vociferously, staging a plant-in, complete with a marching band, signs, and flags. Emotions were at a boiling point. There was open talk of war.

Then things really got out of hand …

Secret Zoo documents obtained by GOOL leaders were released showing that the Zoo had designs on annexing Rainbow Lake for a proposed “AutoZone Crocodiles of the Nile” exhibit, and also had plans to take over portions of the Old Forest for an interactive “Jack Links Messin’ With Sasquatch” diorama.

The Zoo responded by saying it had uncovered evidence that GOOL operatives had infiltrated its Northwest Passage exhibit via the Lick Creek aqueduct and planted kudzu, privet, and poison oak. GOOL denied the charge but did not rule out the possibility of future guerrilla planting raids. “We have thousands of seedlings,” said a GOOL spokesperson. “We would hate to have to use them, but the Zoo may force our hand.”

Then, on Monday, 87-year-old golfer Myron “Stroky” Teitlebaum was taken hostage by the Zoo after he bladed a 7-iron across the “Geezer Strip” into Zoo property and tried to retrieve his ball. An anonymous GOOL spokesperson told a WMC Action News 5 reporter that “getting a few meerkats out of there wouldn’t be that difficult,” and that such an action might be necessary in order to arrange a prisoner exchange. “Stroky is not in good health,” she added. “He needs his fiber pills.”

The Zoo then announced that it would begin a program called “Free Tank Parking Tuesdays” on the Greensward, and that it had made a deal with Sunrise Pontiac GMC to open a dealership on the land now occupied by the Overton Bark dog area.

“We get a million visitors a year,” said Zoo president Chuck “You and the Horse You Rode In On” Brady. “We’ll do whatever we have to do to keep them happy, if you get my drift.”

Alertly sensing that there just might possibly be a problem in Overton Park, the new Strickland administration announced that Secretary of State John Kerry would arrive in Memphis this week to try to bring all parties to the table for peace talks.

That’s where things stand as of this writing. We can only hope that cooler heads will prevail and that lasting peace can somehow be achieved in this turbulent region. Our children’s futures depend on it.